Election season ratchets up the tension for Cuyahoga County's Jewish voters

“Things are getting ugly among the Jews of Cuyahoga County, with family splits and dinner invitations declined.”

So writes Roger Cohen in this New York Times op-ed piece about the pressures of a tight presidential race in Ohio and the Senate candidacy of a conservative Jewish Republican, Josh Mandel, who has divided loyalties among the 80,000 Jews of Greater Cleveland.

Mr. Cohen writes that a recent advertisement in the Cleveland Jewish News, paid for by a group called Jews for Israel 2012, asked this question: “Are you willing to bet the life of the Jewish people on this president?” It questioned Barack Obama's willingness to defend an Israel “threatened by nuclear annihilation.”

He asserts that “about 80 percent of Cleveland's Jews are believed to have voted for Obama last time.” Robert Goldberg, former chairman of the United Jewish Communities (now The Jewish Federations of North America) and a Mitt Romney supporter, tells Mr. Cohen that he believes that number will drop to 60% this time.

“Jews just don't trust Obama on Israel,” Mr. Goldberg says. “The president has no sympathy for Israel. His sympathy is for the Muslim world he knew as a child.”

Nashville Public Radio reports that transit designers there “have been looking north to Cleveland for guidance on building a high-speed bus line connecting East Nashville to West End.”

Cleveland officials “say the decision will require a leap of faith,” according to the story. The leap here paid off, as the $200 million HealthLine has been a boon for development.

Joe Calabrese, RTA's general manager, tells Nashville Public Radio that it's important to get the public behind such a disruptive project.

“You need to get them to be on your side or they're going to make your life miserable for you — especially during the construction phase. But you also need leadership.”

Southern exposure: I'm not a huge LinkedIn person, but I was glad to be part of it to get an update from auto dealer Bernie Moreno.

His LinkedIn page notes that he's now president of Mercedes-Benz of Fort Mitchell, Ky.

“We will be opening (in 2013) a new Mercedes-Benz, Sprinter, AMG and smart dealership in the Cincinnati market,” according to the page. “We are currently looking to hire all positions, except general manager. If you have any interest or recommendations, please let me know.”

It's filled with detail about Mr. Husted's performance in office, including his initial defiance of an Aug. 31 order by a federal court judge “that stymied an effort by Republican officials there to limit early voting dates for hundreds of thousands of registered voters,” according to the profile.

The key takeaway:

Over the past year, in one election-related fight after another, Husted has proven to be a relentless partisan, the national face of voter suppression. Now, with one week to go before a close election, an election which many political observers believe could come down to Ohio, Husted is about to become something else: an unabashed local partisan who could very well decide who wins by deciding which rules apply. Is America ready for this? Ready for this man to be the one supervising the vote counting in the only state left that seems to matter?

Big Monet money: ArtMediaAgency.com reports that an 1881 Monet painting, Champ de blé, being sold at auction by the Cleveland Museum of Art should fetch $5 million to $7 million.

The museum already “owns a very rich and interesting ensemble of works by this painter,” the story says, and the Nov. 5 sale at Sotheby's New York is part of “a natural process of refinement of the collection.”

Pet cause: The pet business is proving to be one of America's most recession-proof industries, according to this story from Forbes.com.

The American Pet Products Association reports spending on pet-related goods and services will hit $53 billion this year, up 22.6% from the start of the recession in 2008.

One service category doing well, according to Forbes.com, is “outsourcing of picking up after our pets.” As an example, the story cites the growth of a Trumbull County company, the frankly named Wholly Crap, that for as little as $12 a week will clean your yard of nasty dog waste.